37 people drown, many rendered homeless as cyclone hits Tamil Nadu

First came the clouds, dark and menacing and pregnant with rain. For the fishermen of Avurivakkam, a coastal village in Tamil Nadu's Chingleput
district, the disturbed skies merely symbolised a day's fishing catch
lost.

advertisement

S.H. Venkatramani

Amarnath K Menon

December 15, 1984

ISSUE DATE: December 15, 1984

UPDATED: May 6, 2014 16:13 IST

First came the clouds, dark and menacing and pregnant with rain. For the fishermen of Avurivakkam, a coastal village in Tamil Nadu's Chingleput district, the disturbed skies merely symbolised a day's fishing catch lost.

Then came the wind, whistling ominously through the thatched huts increasing in intensity as the rain started hammering down. Huge trees swayed wildly in the wind and the villagers knew this was no ordinary thundershower.

Huddling around a ramshackle radio, they received the first news of an approaching cyclone due to hit the Pondicherry coast further south. By nightfall, it was clear that their prayers that the cyclone would pass them by were not to be answered.Trees and electric poles were crashing down all around and then the full fury of the storm hit. Within minutes, the huts of the village collapsed.

Scrambling outside in terror, they found it no safer. The uprooted thorny thickets that dot the area were like a fusillade from a machine-gun. Battered and bleeding, they clawed their way into the two village temples, the only brick buildings in the area.

Recalls Gajendran, 30, a fisherman: "We were not even conscious of the blood we were losing because of the deep scratches from the thorns. We thought the end had come."

For many, it had.The cyclone ripped through over 70 villages and hamlets around Avurivakkam in the Pulicat Lake area. Within hours, the entire area lay buried under an unending sheet of swirling water, in some cases, 10 feet deep. Hundreds of cattle were swept away along with 37 people who drowned, according to conservative official estimates.

Hurricane havoc

Even in Madras city, where ample warning was given and sturdier shelters were available, 17 people perished and 60,000 hutment-dwellers were rendered homeless.The worst hit was the Nellore district of neighbouring Andhra Pradesh where the onslaught was the worst since the 1977 cyclone disaster.

As many as 816 villages covering 7,710 square km were battered by winds that ranged from 180 to 220 kmph. By the time the Indian army relief teams arrived in assault boats, over 270 people had died while nearly 150,000 more had lost their homes.

The spindle-shaped island of Sriharikota, India's rocket launching station, was cut off from the mainland except for a tenuous telephone link and entire sections of railway tracks were uprooted bringing train services to a standstill.

Unconfirmed reports, however, suggested that the damage was much greater than believed. In the Pulicat area, villagers say that an entire row of huts on the beach in Arangam village was buried under a huge mound of sand with their occupants.

But the most tragic part of the devastation was the hopeless predicament of thousands of villagers on the north Tamil Nadu and south Andhra coasts who found themselves marooned overnight. Said Veeramma of Avurivakkam: "By Tuesday morning (November 13) the wind had reduced but we discovered that we had been plunged into a horrifying world of bog and water and thorns. Our crops were gone, our huts were gone, our wells were submerged so there was not a drop of drinking water available."

It was worse for others. Recalls Ramadas, a small farmer from Poducherimedu: "Our small village was so inundated that we had to climb to the tops of surviving trees where we clung for two whole days before the water receded." The fact that the relief operations were delayed only worsened matters.

When the cyclone hit, most of the senior AIADMK ministers in Tamil Nadu had rushed to Delhi to hammer out electoral arrangements with the Congress(I). It was only four days after that air force helicopters arrived over the area to drop food packets to the villagers.

A watery wasteland near Sulurpet

But for many, the cyclone is just the beginning of the tragedy. Says Loganathan, a farmer from Sirilapakkam: "The entire place is covered with water. I don't think we can come back here for at least another two months."

The cyclone was also the first major test for India's debutante Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi. The day after the Lok Sabha elections were announced, Rajiv and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao made an aerial survey of the flood-hit areas and immediately announced an advance of Rs 10 crore for relief work by the Centre and the two state governments.

The magnitude of the devastation may not be known till early December but the prime minister promptly directed a central team to visit Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to assess the damage. The directive was in welcome contrast to the earlier practice of sending appraisal teams several weeks after a disaster occurred.

In Andhra at least, the death toll could have been higher but for the lessons learnt after the 1977 disaster in which thousands lost their lives. Alert weathermen were this time aided by six satellite pictures every 24 hours which gave warning of the threat.

Senior officials, food and other essential supplies were rushed into Nellore and three other districts in advance of the cyclone enabling authorities to swing into relief operations the moment the cyclonic winds and rain abated. But even with that advantage, the toll was fearfully high and its exact dimensions are still to be gauged.

With elections around the corner, many of the affected are concerned that the current involvement of the state and Central governments might get diverted or diffused. And that would be an even greater tragedy than the one they have just survived.

Get real-time alerts and all the news on your phone with the all-new India Today app. Download from